


dress you up in my love

by lostlenore



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:23:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: “Yuri's fashion choices have always been…” Katsuki trails off, apparently unable to ransack any of the three languages Otabek knows he speaks for a word that properly describes the spectacle before them. Otabek revels in the optical illusion created by that many rhinestones in one place.





	dress you up in my love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PencilTrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PencilTrash/gifts).



 

Yuri’s twentieth birthday comes around, and Yuri tips from being a loud, angry teen into being a loud, angry adult with barely a blink.

There’s an appropriately loud party in Victor and Katsuki’s penthouse, because Victor physically recoils just thinking about Yuri’s shithole apartment (this is, of course, why Yuri keeps it) and because any party involving professional skaters and alcohol is bound to end in noise complaints. Someone, probably Katsuki, had put out a blanket ban on all stripper poles this time around, and instead opted for the blood sport that is DDR.

Otabek claims the end of the couch for Kazakhstan, and tries not to embarrass himself every time he looks at Yuri’s face, flushed and glowing with happiness. Instead he talks with Georgi about music, and with Katsuki, who has generously stepped away from the frothing madness happening in front of the television long enough for Yuri to actually win for a change.

“Think of it as a birthday gift,” he says when he explains this to Otabek. Katsuki smiles into his champagne glass, quietly smug, and Otabek is reminded exactly why everyone who meets Katsuki is just a little bit in love with him.

“Rank fucking cheaters,” Yuri says, bouncing over to the couch after he's gone. “I’m going to kick Mila’s ass. She’s only this good because her sister has an Xbox.”

He kneels down to scratch Potya’s ears, and Otabek has to remind himself that it’s stupid to be jealous of a cat. Golden wisps of hair are falling out of Yuri's braid, down across his forehead, and Otabek is just drunk enough to reach out and tuck one back safely behind his ear, smoothing it into place.  

Yuri freezes at the touch. They're closer than Otabek realized, Yuri still on his knees, and when he looks up at Otabek through his eyelashes, it's with an expression Otabek's never seen before.

"Sorry," he says, realizing belatedly his hand is still resting on Yuri's jaw. "You had a thing--"

"--It's fine," Yuri says, the words tripping out of his mouth. His face is a spectacular shade of red. "I'm just going to..."

"Yeah."

"Right."

He leaves Otabek holding the cat.

"We," Otabek tells Potya, "will be drinking our feelings tonight."

Potya makes a sympathetic noise that sounds like a baby burping.

"Exactly. You can supervise."

The next morning is desperately awkward in a way their interactions haven't been since Otabek abducted Yuri from the side of the road in Barcelona and proposed eternal friendship. Otabek is surprised Yuri comes to see Otabek off to the train station, even if he does come in full belligerence, hands jammed in his pockets, scowling at passing children.  

“See you soon,” Otabek says in what he hopes is a casual voice, lingering at the turnstile. 

Yuri shuffles his feet. “Yeah.”

Otabek knows Yuri’s terrible at goodbyes, but usually he limits it to a single hug in the doorway of the apartment, all sharp angles and awkward maneuvering. He's not sure what to do here, and Yuri is, if anything, less sure, and Otabek doesn't understand how they got in this fucking mess in the first place when five days into their nascent friendship Otabek ripped Yuri’s gloves off with his teeth in front of an audience of thousands.

“I’ll text you when I get back,” he offers.

“’K.” Yuri shrugs. The shell of his ear is flushed pink.

“Yuri,” Otabek says, exasperated. Yuri’s eyes flick up in surprise, and Otabek’s startled to find that same expression from the night before, magnified in its intensity. Yuri looks away.

“I have to go,” he finally says, and Yuri nods. Otabek has no goddamn idea what’s going on anymore.

He picks at the memory all the way back to Almaty. Was it something he did? Otabek thought he’d done a good job of folding his feelings for Yuri away over the years, tucking them away into a little box in his chest. Maybe he hadn’t been as careful as he’d thought? If Yuri noticed, if he’s made Yuri uncomfortable…Yuri’s far from his only friend these days, but his friendship is uniquely special to Otabek, and the prospect of giving that up aches in a way that echoes through him unpleasantly.  

In the end he doesn't have much time to dwell. Worlds is at the end of the month and there's work to be done. He and Yuri will talk then.

 

* * *

 

Otabek hadn't counted on the exhibition gala.

He and Yuri continue to text regularly and skype if they have the time. Yuri sends him ugly paparazzi photos of JJ caught mid-sneeze, and Otabek sends him the trashy Euro-pop and hipster pan flute dirges he picks up DJ-ing. Yuri tags him in an Instagram video doing pas de chats in his bobbly tiger-headed slippers while Potya yells in the background. Otabek snaps him a view from his bedroom window. They fly to Fukuoka for Worlds and Otabek beats Yuri to gold by a fraction of a point—a reversal of where they stood at this year's Grand Prix—with Pitchit swooping in to snatch the bronze.

Then: Yuri takes center ice at the gala. Trust Yuri to take ‘show stopping’ literally—the crowd audibly pauses, like it needs a second to process what it’s seeing. Otabek certainly does. There’s a reason that shade of lavender isn’t found in nature, and the aggressively paisley waistcoat and cuffs only add insult to injury.  

“Seunggil, my man!” Pitchit shouts, Snapchatting so furiously Otabek is worried for this thumbs. “On a scale from one to Parrot Flamenco Infamy, how do you rank young Plisetsky’s costume?”

“That…is a lot of paisley,” Seunggil hedges.

Next to Otabek, Victor almost chokes on his gum and is saved by Guang Hong whacking him on the back with suspicious enthusiasm.

"I take it you didn't know about this either?" Victor asks, once he's got air back in his lungs. Otabek shrugs. At the tender age of fifteen, Yuri had been bounced from a club in Barcelona dressed like the Axel Rose edition of a Cabbage Patch Doll in a desperate bid to get Otabek’s help in choreographing his exhibition skate. Twenty year-old Yuri had hid this program from Otabek as surely as they’d hidden their _Welcome to the Madness_ program from Yakov. Otabek wishes that didn’t sting, but it does.

“He didn’t tell me anything.” It's not like they collaborate on their gala performances every year, but the music is always something passed between them, a small gift or an inside joke.

“Really,” Victor stares.

“Shh, it’s starting,” Katsuki says, digging his elbow into Victor’s ribs. The AV team has bravely rallied, and the first delicate strains of Def Leppard emerge from the speakers.

“ _If you've got love in your sights,_ ” the music growls as Yuri sides right into a spread eagle, “ _watch out—love bites.”_

Victor puts his head in his hands.  “Yuuri, remind me to send Yakov a fruit basket.”

 

* * *

 

“What did you think?” Yuri asks afterward, like pressing on a bruise.There’s a nervous energy to the way he’s fluttering around Otabek’s hotel room, his hands never still for more than a beat.

Something more is at work here, something Otabek is missing. Otabek could force the point, but he wants Yuri to _trust_ him, to come to Otabek with his worries on the basis of their friendship, not necessity. He refrains from mentioning the paisley or the lavender or the song, which he’s not sure he understands anyway. People already know that Yuri bites; Victor has the scar to prove it.

“You were good,” he says, because Yuri is never anything less. “It looked fun.”

“Fun,” Yuri says, blankly.

“Yeah. You choreographed it yourself right?” Victor is more collaborative a coach than Yakov was, but it’s easy to tell when Yuri is the one with both hands on the creative controls. See: Barcelona.

“Yes.” There’s an edge to his voice. Otabek looks at him, looks at the the flyaway hairs curling around his ears, the faint blush to his throat, the sharp line of his mouth. He finds Yuri looking back. “Were you watching?”

“Of course.” The problem is Otabek doesn’t know how to stop watching.

“Good.” Yuri says, almost a purr. There’s a look in his eye that Otabek knows all too well means trouble. “That’s a start.”

 

* * *

  

“Yuri's fashion choices have always been…” Katsuki trails off, apparently unable to ransack any of the three languages Otabek knows he speaks for a word that properly describes the spectacle before them.

Otabek revels in the optical illusion created by that many rhinestones in one place. It’s cosmically unfair that Otabek can look into the bedazzled maelstrom on the sidewalk in front of them and still be caught in helpless adoration by the curve of Yuri’s cheek, like a fly trapped in amber.

“Yes.” Combined with the violently orange faux-fur jacket, the outfit has all the aesthetic pleasure of a mugging.

“This seems like an escalation,” Katsuki says, with grim amusement.

“I think I'm being punished,” Otabek admits. “I’m not sure yet what for.”

“I’m sure it isn't that.” Katsuki is sweet-natured, with an open, honest face. But he looks at Yuri, huddled with Yuuko around a rubbish bin and cooing at something hidden inside, and his expression is doubtful. “Probably.”

 

* * *

 

If Otabek thought the exhibition gala was a singular hiccup in the fabric of space-time, a fever dream of aggressively ugly fashion and mixed signals, his hopes are dashed when Yuri steps off the train in Almaty dressed like he'd traveled back in time to mug a jazzercise instructor.

“Victor’s so pissed,” Yuri says, gleefully dumping his gear bag into Otabek’s waiting arms. “He’s losing the last of his hair, it’s beautiful.”

“Hmm,” Otabek says, still reeling from the bad acid trip that is Yuri’s leggings. “You did tell him you were spending the month here, didn’t you?”

"That's what instagram is for," Yuri waves this concern away. Otabek watches two men across the street walk into a parking meter, distracted by the colors of Yuri's shirt dancing in a kaleidoscope of terrible choices.

The next week brings fresh sartorial horrors, and a wretched seesaw of stilted conversation. There are whole stretches of hours where banter flows between them easily, where they fall back into years of uncomplicated friendship, and Otabek wonders if he's imagined all the recent awkwardness between them. Then Otabek will say something innocuous and watch the lines of Yuri's shoulders go taunt like piano wire and they're right back to where they started.

Otabek almost asks three separate times. _Just tell me what I did wrong! Tell me what the fuck is going on!_ Then he remembers Yuri’s gala skate, the weeks of politely vague texts and Victor turning to him to ask, _I take it you didn't know about this either?_

Biting his tongue is difficult, but Otabek isn't the Hero of Kazakhstan for nothing. Yuri saunters through the farmer’s market with Otabek in the most effusively ugly floral blouse Otabek has ever seen, running his fingers suggestively over some stick of unidentified street meat, and Otabek says fucking nothing.

Yuri has a professional athlete’s body and the kind of pre-Raphaelite beauty that starts cults. It’s physically impossible for him to look ugly in anything he wears, but goddamn he's trying. Otabek just wishes he knew why, because his brain is tearing itself in two trying to reconcile Yuri’s bedazzled pink-orange capris--clearly meant for retirees playing shuffleboard on cruise ships--with the delicate golden shadow of his eyelashes splayed across his cheek.

"None of this would've happened if you let his fanbase eat him," Otabek tells the bathroom mirror. "You brought this on yourself."

Except when he emerges it's to find Yuri draped across the futon wearing two loosely-stitched napkins aspiring to be a tank top.

"Oh," Yuri smirks, a wave of blond hair falling across his bare shoulder. "I didn't see you there."

"If your shirt ripped you can borrow one of mine," Otabek says, taking a defensive position on the floor opposite. "That many safety pins can't be comfortable."

"Fashion isn't comfortable," Yuri snarls, and Otabek honestly can't tell if he's joking or not. "God, I swear you're being dense on purpose. What do I have to do here, twerk on a cop car?"

"Please don't." Victor may be losing his hair but he's not an invalid. Otabek doesn't want to die. 

Yuri stalks off, leaving a trail safety pins like breadcrumbs in his wake. 

Clearly it's time for Otabek to take matters into his own hands.  

 

* * *

 

The club Otabek brings Yuri to is only a club in the loosest sense of the term. Flyers and dollar bills are pasted to every available bit of wall space, giving the impression of a dance floor set in the middle of a cave with above-average acoustics. There’s a thick layer of used gum under the tables, and a thick layer of grime on top of that. The bartender--a roughly bearded man who salutes Otabek in greeting--has spikes on his leather vest the size of Yuri’s entire face.

Yuri looks rapturous. “This is--”

The ending of his sentence is buried under the wail of an electric guitar.

“It’s a punk club,” Otabek shouts in his ear. Experience has taught him it’s the only way to be heard in this building unless you’re the one onstage, holding the mic. “They only call me when there’s a hole in their schedule, but I thought you might like it.” The last bit comes out more as a question. He’s not sure of anything anymore, when it comes to Yuri.

“It’s perfect,” Yuri says, gazing in adoration at the sweaty, hairy men in their matching _this machine kills fascists_ t-shirts winding down their set on stage. The force of his smile could power a nuclear generator.

“Great.” Otabek points to a claustrophobic booth left of stage, “that’s where I’ll be. It’s a 90 minute set, shouldn’t take too long.”

“Right.” Yuri’s face falls. “I forgot, you’re working.”

“Sorry,” Otabek squeezes his shoulder in apology. “Tell Erik you’re with me and he’ll put drinks on my tab.” He honestly thought it’d be better like this--Otabek is a terrible dancer, and their training at the rink aside, Yuri desperately needs to dance whatever mood he’s in away. Otabek has his music, Yuri has Lilia’s dance studio, and this isn't the same, but it’s the closest Otabek can get.

Plus, this way Yuri has someone to watch his back if he wants to pick up. Otabek wouldn’t recommend it; sure, he’s biased, but he’s also hooked up in the bathrooms here before and is reasonably sure they’re responsible for every plague outbreak in the last century.

“Hook up?!” Yuri says when Otabek explains this to him. He clutches the fringe of the ugly carpet-stroke-poncho-stroke-roadkill draped over his shoulders. The pompoms dangle threateningly. “What the fuck?!”

Otabek shrugs. “It's an option. There’s a dance floor too, not that you can really see it right now.” The crowd in front of them couldn’t be accused of doing anything so sedate as dancing. 

“You think I came here because I want to blow with some fucking mouth-breather in a public toilet?” Yuri shouts, two twin spots of color high on his cheeks. Otabek doesn’t think this, really, but he makes the mistake of glancing away from Yuri and down at the brown and orange striped pants Yuri’s wearing.

“You are an idiot, Otabek Atlin.”

He watches Yuri flounce off to the bar, replaying the conversation in his head as he crawls into the DJ booth to set up his equipment. Yuri’s spent the four years Otabek’s known him laser-focused on his budding career, and Otabek was content to table all confession of undying love on his part until a later time.

He has a feeling now might be that time. It's not doing them any good, the two of them keeping their secrets. Maybe Otabek just has to find the courage to be honest.

 _I was born on a Saturday night,_ sing the Mean Jeans _. I didn’t get laid I got into a fight._

The crowd warms back up to the idea of movement, stamping their feet in time with the drums. He tracks Yuri’s bobbing blond head carving a path through the crowd back to the dance floor. He’s got a drink in each hand, something terrifyingly pink, and with enough fruit skewers to stave off dysentery. The gleam in his eye promises at least one of those skewers will end up embedded in anyone who crosses him before the night is through.

Otabek offers up the Mad Caddies as an olive branch. _It’s all about what you wear, the color of your hair, and how many tattoos you got on your arm. So how did we get here, where’d it all go wrong?_  

It pries a shadow of a smile from Yuri, so Otabek delves deep through all Yuri’s favorites: Def Leppard and Kiss, Whitesnake and Ratt, Gun 'n Roses and the Strokes. With each song Yuri smiles a little wider, dances a little bit closer. Otabek tries not to think about the stray cats in the alley behind his house that his sister used to lure in with scraps of fish, but the expression on Yuri’s face is almost feline. He stalks his way through the crowd, circling, and Otabek is ever aware of being in his crosshairs.

By the time he’e worked his way around to the Scorpions Otabek’s lost the crowd completely. All of the hardened punks in their ripped jean jackets stand around in confused clumps, watching Yuri rock it like a hurricane. _My cat is purring, it scratches my skin, so what is wrong with another sin_? He's windmilling his air guitar in the wrong direction. Otabek loves him wholly and impossibly. 

Yuri’s not the only one trying to climb the stage as the Scorpions fade into Extreme, but he’s the only one that looks particularly happy about it. _M_ _ore than words is all you have to do to make it real,_ croons Gary Cherone, and Otabek waves the bouncer off so that Yuri can kick his way into the booth, bend Otabek over the sound mixer, and kiss him square on the mouth. _Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me, ‘cause I'd already know_.

“Look at me.” Yuri takes Otabek’s face in both his hands, so clearly a learned behavior from Victor that Otabek has the wild urge to laugh. “I don’t give a fuck about those assholes, just be here. Look at me.”

Ah. The clothes. _Look at me_. Otabek grasps onto a faint thread of understanding and holds tight.

“Yura,” he says, with all the seriousness he can muster. “I haven’t stopped looking at you since I was eighteen. It’s impossible to look anywhere else.”

“You wanted me to hook up in a bathroom!”

“You kept the gala music a secret!” It feels petty but Otabek’s still not over it.

“It was about you!”

“Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Yuri says, mocking.

" _Quack_ ," says the shitty pre-loaded SFX button Otabek is crushing with his elbow. " _Quack! Quack quack qua--_ "

 

* * *

 

“This is nostalgic,” Otabek says as Erik tosses them out on the wet summer sidewalk.

“Good fucking riddance,” Yuri glares at Erik's retreating back. His hand is wrapped around Otabek's waist, possessive, and Otabek revels in the sharp prick of Yuri's nails against his skin. "He makes a shitty daiquiri." 

 

* * *

 

There’s not much to Otabek’s apartment. It’s cheap, clean, and a short distance from the rink, which is all he really needs. It does, however, have abysmally thin walls.

“I don’t care if your neighbors hear me,” Yuri says, impatient, and still wearing the his cat-eared helmet from the bike ride over. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”

“ _You’ve_ been waiting?” Otabek mutters. “Also: I care if they hear you, I have to live here.”

" _Oh yeah_ ," Yuri moans, banging his tiny fists on Otabek's wall. " _OH YEAH, HARDER BEKA. I WANNA FEEL IT_." 

Otabek gets a hand over Yuri's mouth before any of his neighbors decide to call the paparazzi out of spite. Predictably, this ends with Yuri taking two of Otabek's fingers into his mouth and _biting_.

"Finally, some quiet," Otabek says. Or, he tries to say, until Yuri flips them and suddenly he's the one being pinned to the wall. Otabek makes a noise. Otabek makes several noises, because Yuri is using all his weight to keep Otabek in place, which Otabek didn't previously know was a thing he was into but is now deeply, viscerally, a thing he is into.

"You were saying?" Yuri says smugly. Otabek's chest feels like one of those cans that slowly collapses inward the further underwater you sink it, until all that's left of his body is a tight hot fist of want, melted down and recast into a new shape around the heat of Yuri's lips at his throat. 

 "Look at me." Yuri slides down, still issuing commands from his knees. 

 Otabek watches. It's impossible to look anywhere else. 

 

* * *

 

Yuri ambushes him before their alarm goes off the next morning. It's a good thing Otabek's spent years training his body to operate purely on muscle memory, otherwise the sight of Yuri in nothing but a ragged three-wolf moon t-shit that barely skims the tops of his thighs would drive Otabek into the nearest wall. 

"You found that in _my_ closet?"

"Weird, right? I thought your closet would be wall-to-wall black turtlenecks, like a cartoon character." Yuri frowns. "Did you just walk into a wall?"

"No," Otabek lies. "And that's hideous, I'm going to burn it."

"Or," Yuri's smile takes a turn for the feline, "you could just take it off me."

Otabek is a fan of the simple solutions. 

"Yes," he says, tossing the shirt away to join last night's clothes. "That is an improvement."

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to LoveActually-rps for being patient with me, and for providing the art for this fic! Infinite blessing on the house of MJ, for being a gem of a human as is her wont, and to Kate, for her wonderful encouragement & support <3


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